Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Black Trowel Collective with Aris Poliopoulos and Colleen Morgan - Modern Myth - Episode 19
782 Plays3 years ago
Today's epsiode is all about mutual aid, anarchism and archaeology. I sat down recently with Aris Politopolis and Colleen Morgan, both of whom are members of The Black Trowel Collective. We discuss what the BTC does and in particular the function of its microgrants, which provide $5-$300 in grants to students of archaeology, with no questions asked.
We also talk about the ways in which anarchism has influenced this kind of work and what "anarchaeology" may mean in terms of working with others.
You can find out more about Black Trowel Collective by visiting the website https://blacktrowelcollective.wordpress.com/ or their Twitter http://twitter.com/blacktrowel
Dr. Aris Politopoulos - Twitter
Dr. Colleen Morgan - Twitter
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Host Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of Modern Myth, where archaeology is treated as modern myth-making. We're part of the Archaeology Podcast Network, and my name is Tristan. I'm the anarchaeologist, and I am the host of this show. Today's episode is one that I've been looking forward to record for quite a while, and I have the wonderful Holly Morgan and Aris Polotopoulos. Yes, got it. Yeah, almost got it.
00:00:54
Speaker
Thank you very much. To talk about the Black Trial Collective.
Who are the Black Trial Collective?
00:00:59
Speaker
So without actually much further ado, I kind of want to talk about what is the Black Trial Collective? And like, how are you both involved? So Aris, do you want to start? Sure.
00:01:11
Speaker
The Black Travel Collective in general is a collective of archaeologists that ranges from students to faculty members to early career researchers to archaeologists in the professional sector that both share an idea about mutual aid and anarchism
00:01:36
Speaker
And through the Black Travel Collective, we've been doing a lot of things that we can talk about today, from mutual aid funds to activism to writing blogs and posts about current issues in archaeology.
00:02:00
Speaker
All right. And Colleen, if somebody wasn't really familiar with things, concepts like mutual aid funds and kind of maybe concepts of anarchism, how would you best describe the Black Trial Collective? The Black Trial Collective, I would say, is a collection of, as Aris said, anarchists, archaeologists, and we are brought together by concepts of prefiguration,
00:02:24
Speaker
both within our conceptualization of archaeology in the past and with current practice. And mutual aid in particular is something that we've really forefronted with our practice. Mutual aid being that it is not charity, it's not a handout, but you give according to your means and then you distribute according to need. And so we find often that a lot of our contributions are actually from students
00:02:54
Speaker
And these are given to other students. And so one of our collective members once joked that all of our students are just passing the same $10 around to each other in need. But we really want to tap into this as we think it's really important that we help out where we can, especially since so many of us have benefited from structural inequalities that have held up our profession for years.
Origins and Formation of the Collective
00:03:21
Speaker
How did this journey start in terms of deciding to come together to become this collective effort? What was the building blocks or the incentive to do this? The original members came together through interest in anarchism and archaeology, and this manifested in SAA sessions and from them corresponding with each other.
00:03:49
Speaker
And then it coalesced during a 2016 amaranth session workshop where they all came together and came up with, say, the Black Trial Collective Manifesto. And then there were several publications that came out of that in the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology and the essay's archaeological record.
00:04:11
Speaker
I was supposed to be there, but I had a baby instead, as one does. And then so this early activity was then followed on by some dialogue and they kind of tried to get more things going on, but it really picked up when Lewis Bork and I decided that we needed more mutual aid in the form of mutual support for anarchists in archaeology.
00:04:40
Speaker
And we started a WhatsApp group and started collecting all of our comrades together. And then this finally has translated into other social media where we try to be active and connect with each other. So what are the main ways in which people get in touch with you? Is that through websites, social media? How do you find people usually get in touch?
00:05:08
Speaker
It depends for the, as Julian said, for starters it sort of began with people that we knew because initiatives based on mutual aid and solidarity are essentially also based on relations of trust as well.
00:05:27
Speaker
So it sort of began from people that we know and people that already are within this broader political framework or mind framework, if you'd like. But as the collective grew, more people have been getting in touch either via VIA, so by knowing that somebody is in the collective or
00:05:53
Speaker
by getting in touch through Twitter. Mostly I would say Twitter is our most successful social media out there.
00:06:03
Speaker
But for the most part, we're also working from word of mouth. And it's quite interesting that, obviously, as an anarchist kind of group, anarchy doesn't mean chaos. It represents here something where it's not really like there's not a single person in charge. It's more like a group kind of decision on things.
00:06:26
Speaker
how has that been for the group to do and like, you know, of it like, has that kind of worked smoothly? How do you feel about that?
How does the Collective Operate?
00:06:36
Speaker
Well, I think we all take the lead in different initiatives and it's really about who has the time and who has the energy for any one given initiative. And so the consensus decision making to my mind has been relatively easy so far. I don't think we've been overly challenged by some of our, the things that we've had to come to consensus on.
00:07:01
Speaker
But we've had smaller meetings where a group of us come together and discuss an initiative. And then we bring it forward to the entire collective for discussion and debate. And then we had a more general meeting a few weeks ago where we managed to come to complete group consensus over several initiatives. And so I think that the group consensus really, really works well for us. And this is aided in part by
00:07:29
Speaker
sharing a worldview that privileges consensus and forefronts the ideas of the precarious and the people that would be considered within an academic structure to be less powerful.
00:07:44
Speaker
Of course. And it's quite interesting, I think, that you're saying about people kind of come in and out of different roles and different things.
Microgrants and Student Support
00:07:55
Speaker
What has been one of the initiatives that has really stood out in the last couple of months for the Black Trial Collective in terms of what it's been able to do?
00:08:09
Speaker
I think the most public facing project that we've done is the microgrants. So through this mutual aid group, part of the Black Trial Collective, which really aims to support archaeology students in need. So that has been definitely one of our
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, one of the primary things we've been engaged with but also recently it was published the running safer sessions blog post a bit of in reaction to
00:08:49
Speaker
All sorts of problematic sessions that have been happening in archaeological conferences and other conferences in recent and past times. So that I would say is also something, one of the highlights of the recent times.
00:09:08
Speaker
And so how does the this micro grant system, how does that actually operate? So if somebody was to get in contact with a need, like how would they get in contact? And what would the what are the kind of rules surrounding that?
00:09:24
Speaker
I'm going to start from this top because I can't remember what I said. I'm sorry. Okay. To apply for a Black Trial Collective Microgrant, you must find our website first. And that's pretty easy to Google. Just Google Black Trial Collective Microgrants.
00:09:39
Speaker
and then it takes you to a form that you fill in and this form will ask for your institutional affiliation and if you are an archaeology student and this is important to us as the people who give us the money to distribute these grants, this is in trust and so we must be able to trust that these people are archaeology students. We also have a query box that we allow
00:10:08
Speaker
people to ask for, to discuss a bit further their needs. This is not necessary and not mandatory. But we found that this really can demonstrate the amount of need there is within archaeology as we get many stories. And we do share some of these stories on Twitter with the permission of the people who apply. But some of the ones that we don't share are
00:10:35
Speaker
really heart-rending and you just see how much archaeology students are struggling right now, not only with the pandemic, but with just ongoing structural racism and classism and everything that we are barriers to keeping people we really need to be participating within the profession.
00:10:59
Speaker
And so is there kind of like the amount that's usually asked for, I don't know if you want to go into this or not, but what are the typical kind of things that people are asking for? We have a range which we can cover, which people can also find the website. So we also have a certain capacity of money that we can distribute, unfortunately.
00:11:26
Speaker
So the microgrants we provide range from anywhere between five to three hundred dollars or pounds or euros. And usually what we see lies on the higher side. A lot of people are in need of basic things. So from rent to covering food, to covering childcare, just in order to be able to continue with their studies of archaeology.
00:11:56
Speaker
So, of course, yeah, it sometimes has to do with research, but we see that for the most part, the struggles are quite real when it's coming to the day-to-day stuff.
00:12:13
Speaker
Have you been surprised by the response to it in terms of the amount of need? Or is it something that you kind of thought, well, actually, there are a lot of people in need, and it's kind of like match due to expectations? I think the response has been a little bit mixed, to be honest. We are
00:12:35
Speaker
The recipients have an incredible amount of generosity given by professors and, as we said, students and even movie stars, apparently, who are interested in archaeology that are able to give. And so this, though, is completely dwarfed by the need that is out there. We regularly can't completely fulfill
00:13:01
Speaker
the required requests that we get each month and so sometimes we're not able to fully distribute according to what people request. And the a lot of our respondents through probably again structural issues regarding internet access have been from the United States, from Europe, but we also find that many of these applicants while they are from universities in
00:13:30
Speaker
again, North America, they are actually immigrants or they come from say Tanzania or from other countries. And so sometimes I think the actual location of the request doesn't really reflect the individual behind the request, if that makes sense. But I feel like we are broadening our reach and we would like to continue to broaden our reach, but in that we would also need to
00:14:00
Speaker
accrue more funds to be able to distribute to that many people. So we're in a very interesting position where we would love to help more students, but our capacity to help them is limited.
00:14:11
Speaker
And of course that comes down to the amount of money that is then raised in the first place from the microgrants and that's in part to the people who are actually donating and as you've said before it seems that there's a lot of archaeology students who are donating in and it's a lot of archaeology students donating out as well. I mean this is something that is open to all students you know so
00:14:38
Speaker
If people are interested, they just need to go to the website to kind of find out more about that.
00:14:46
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So just go to the website and we have a pretty big set of frequently asked questions regarding the microgrants and for what you can apply and how do the microgrants work and to what extent we're asking questions or not. So all the information are basically there. And if still there are some questions
00:15:11
Speaker
regarding people whether they feel that they should apply or not, they can always contact us via our email or via Twitter and we'd be happy to help. I think it's important to highlight here that
00:15:28
Speaker
Very often, we get people who are hesitant to apply, that they feel that their need is not enough to apply. So it is important that we want to encourage people who actually need to not be afraid to apply and not be afraid to ask for this money because this is not a charity, this is a mutual aid group and we're working.
00:15:55
Speaker
from the premise of solidarity and of helping each other. So please, if you are in need, don't hesitate to apply. And now we're going to go to a break and we'll come back to our second half. We have more discussions about mutual aid, anarchism and archaeology and how to help. Thank you very much.
Anarchism and Archaeology: Debunking Myths
00:16:21
Speaker
And we're back. I'm talking to Aris and Colleen of the Black Trial Collective. We've just been talking about how the Black Trial Collective microgrants fund works and operates. And now I think it's kind of time to talk about maybe a little bit of kind of
00:16:38
Speaker
anarchism in archaeology and kind of discussing the group dynamics of having things like this so I mean are there are there many archaeologists who identify as anarchists and why aren't they on the TV? Anybody want to take a stab at that one?
00:16:57
Speaker
I can have a go, I guess, or briefly. I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of archaeologists who identify as anarchists or who are anarchists in their worldview, but they haven't maybe realized yet or they don't feel confident to say it yet.
00:17:22
Speaker
Anarchism is this ideology that is deeply rooted in ideas of solidarity and ideas of freedom and of social equality. And these are things that a lot of people would subscribe to. Often, anarchism tends to be this
00:17:43
Speaker
this scary world that people associate with chaos or with destruction or with people covering their faces and throwing molotov cocktails. But this is not what anarchism essentially is. So a bit of a lack of understanding of what anarchism actually means has sort of disencouraged people to associate with it.
00:18:11
Speaker
And that is also part of the reason of why we don't see these kind of things on TV, because nobody wants to necessarily associate with it. And at the same time, it's still a radical movement. It's still something that goes against the status quo, both on a social manner, but also within academia. And therefore, a traditional outlet should not be very keen on promoting this kind of radical work necessarily.
00:18:42
Speaker
So apart from the people like myself who put anarchy in their Twitter handle, I thought it was a funny double entendre. And then I realized, actually, you know what? I kind of like being disruptive in archaeology. But disruption and the way that anarchy takes down traditional forms, I mean, that's quite important in archaeology, isn't it? I think archaeology is itself
00:19:10
Speaker
a kind of grown out of kind of colonialism, race science and other things. And the fact that we need to kind of dismantle it from within is quite important. But I mean, it's definitely an uphill struggle. How do you feel about Colleen being somebody who has like written about anarchism and archaeology?
00:19:34
Speaker
How do you feel like, what are the steps that archaeology needs to take to actually be more radical? Ah, very good question.
00:19:45
Speaker
I think, and building off of what Aris said, another archaeologist said to me that he really thought that most archaeologists were actually anarchists. And to a certain extent, I agree. It's very much a graver's, you might be, are you an anarchist? You may be surprised. And many of us behave in ways that are forefront in anarchism in, again, as Aris said,
00:20:15
Speaker
mutual aid and solidarity and egalitarianism. But sometimes we just need to be able to know the terminology and know words like prefiguration to help build our understanding of how to build a better future within archaeology. I wrote an article a few years ago about a single context archaeology, which is a methodology that is very British archaeological methodology.
00:20:43
Speaker
And how this complemented, in many ways, a more egalitarian approach to understanding and excavating archaeology.
Innovative Archaeological Methods
00:20:54
Speaker
And this really was rooted in a sense of health and safety, so consideration for your fellows, and for in skillment and individual authority within archaeologists to have the craft ability to
00:21:12
Speaker
excavate and interpret remains without having a constant supervision from a director saying, no, this is right, no, this is wrong, but actually building an interpretation together. And finally, archaeology, especially in London, about 40 years ago, was
00:21:30
Speaker
quite radical and you regularly see archaeologists marching with banners. And so there's a lot of ties for archaeologists within broader social movements. And I think it's really time to reinvigorate that and to form our understanding about archaeology through anarchist principles.
00:21:52
Speaker
It does feel sometimes that archaeology relies on large institutions, you know, to provide it with some sort of authority and credibility, especially in the public eye. Obviously, like anarchism would be towards possibly dismantling and de-powering those institutions, or have I, like, is that a wrong understanding from my side of things? Like, I don't know if we really need
00:22:19
Speaker
large institutions to keep a credibility? We, both as individuals or as anarchists, we don't need the institutions necessarily. The idea comes, I think, mostly from the fact that there is an establishment where these kinds of institutions are prevalent.
00:22:43
Speaker
where to be credible is to be associated with a large institution, whether that institution is an academic institution or a funding body or even a news agency, right? And these kind of outlets are the ones who provide credibility much more oftentimes than the quality of work that is being produced.
00:23:10
Speaker
So we don't really need it, but it's the kind of places that if we want to move forward with an anarchist archaeology, it's the places that we need to disrupt to make sure that voices can be heard.
00:23:29
Speaker
from other sides to make sure that voices surrounding ideas about the past, perceptions about the past and a radical shift on how we view the past from the bottom up means to engage with these institutions and radically change them and actively participate not in the sense of reinforcing them, but in the sense of disrupting them.
00:23:56
Speaker
I'm quite interested because someone could take a very superficial reading of the desire to reject institutions as the same kind of place that many pseudo-archaeologists come from in terms of not being one of the experts, not being from a museum or something. And the fact that they aren't tied to those traditional institutions, that they have information that we don't have access to,
00:24:26
Speaker
Obviously, there is a very big difference between giving other people a voice and rejecting those institutions. But how do anarchist archaeology, how do they find those voices, people from which their voices have been taken from the
Balancing Anarchy with Institutions
00:24:46
Speaker
past? Speaking to Iris's earlier point, I think it's very much the mission of anarchist archaeologists to build a new world in the shell of the old.
00:24:55
Speaker
And how you navigate yourself as a individual anarchist within institutions can be really scary and it can be really difficult and you always see
00:25:08
Speaker
the cartoon right that says, ah, but you participate in modern society. Yes, I am actually at university at the moment. I have taken funding from major institutions. And trying to navigate these, you may call them, hypocrisies or engagements with other things, it's always been really fascinating. And I think the participation in a collective
00:25:34
Speaker
for me really helps with that because it aids in counter-power. And so you're able to build power outside of these institutions together. And as Eris has mentioned, we have a multi-ethnic collective that is from all over the world at all stages within archaeology. And we're able to really come together in solidarity to speak against and through these institutions
00:26:02
Speaker
And I really encourage as many people as possible to get together their own collectives because they're extremely powerful. And being the lone individual tilting at windmills is never very welcomed by the institution. But when you get in a collective, people start to have to listen to you. I think I forgot your original question. I just wanted to talk about Eric's saying.
00:26:30
Speaker
Well, I mean, it's how do we how do we give voice to those marginalized voices? Like, how do we know who they are in the first place? And then how do we give them some sort of voice? You know, does that, you know, it's not simply the rejection of institutions that's important. It's actually the rest of the work that really makes anarchist archaeology important.
00:26:58
Speaker
I think to go a little bit further back in the first part of the question, because I think it is really important, you very rightly pointed out that there are other pseudoarchaeologists or people who sort of want or they claim that they want to disrupt traditional science, so to speak. But the key difference is that these kind of people, they want
00:27:25
Speaker
to claim a place on who gets to be the author of the past. So these are the kind of people that they don't want to disrupt the current structure to create a more open and accessible knowledge about the past.
00:27:44
Speaker
but rather they want their voices to be the loudest. And on archaeology, archaeologists come exactly from the opposite perspective. It's about disrupting the structure so other voices can be heard, so more voices can be heard, and authorship about the past can be communal rather than singular, rather than coming from the ivory tower of academia. And to do that,
00:28:11
Speaker
And to make sure that this is happening means to engage with society. So one of the first steps for archaeologists to get out there is to actually really get out of their own offices and instead of simply excavating, make sure that whatever they dig, whatever they
00:28:33
Speaker
whatever the research area is, that they come in direct contact with the people living there, the local population, the people whom their heritage are excavating, because oftentimes they are the ones who have the knowledge about the past. And our work is complementary, right? Is to make sure that this is communicated, but
00:29:00
Speaker
We need to allow for these local populations for indigenous groups, for people who are currently marginalized by the capitalist society, to be the authors of their own pasts and of their own histories.
00:29:18
Speaker
I know that is a very good point. And I think that does speak to what I was asking about. Because I think this is the key thing, is that for a lot of people, especially with terms they're not familiar with, it can be kind of daunting. Colleen, could I ask you about pre-futuration? If you could kind of put it in simple terms, what does that actually mean?
00:29:47
Speaker
Prefiguration is to start as you need to go on. So if you wish for there to be a more just and egalitarian society, then you need to be doing all of your actions towards making that just and egalitarian society need to be just and egalitarian. And so it is very much about thinking about the future and trying to make a future
00:30:16
Speaker
rather than trying to do a bunch of bad things and then suddenly think that oh, the children will fix it.
00:30:26
Speaker
Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I understand that. It's kind of like, there's no point, there's no point in like, if you want to adjust an equal society using like, authority and like terror to get there. Like, I understand that you're trying to actually start, start, start with good roots. If that's a better if that's a simpler way of saying it. And it that directly contrasts with socialism, obviously,
00:30:54
Speaker
that seeks to have a vanguard action that will make a government action that will turn everybody into socialists. And then the power will wither away. And so the power will go when everybody realizes that it's better to be a socialist. But it seems as if history at least has told us that this doesn't really happen the withering away.
00:31:20
Speaker
I wonder by analogy whether that's also an issue with regards to public outreach. I'm very, very interested in the intersection between the public and history in the past, and how does the public mediate that and understand the past? And I think one of the things that I've always wondered is, well, is there a point at which we can
00:31:45
Speaker
educate the public enough that they become, I don't know, conscious of history? But like, is there something to be conscious of in history in the same terms as like the Marxist class consciousness? Is there something about history that we could educate people enough of that they could make their own decisions about it? Or is that the wrong approach to go with entirely?
Educating the Public and Shifting Narratives
00:32:09
Speaker
I think that is people are conscious of various histories and currently we are in a situation or in a period in history where
00:32:25
Speaker
We tend to think of the world in completely objective manners and therefore we believe that history is set in stone, that there is no way to retell history, that there is no way to rethink about history.
00:32:43
Speaker
And that history that is set in stone is currently the history of our nation states, the history of colonialism, and the history that wants the West to be at the forefront of societal change and of technological change.
00:33:02
Speaker
I think once there is a shift in perspective of the past as being shared, as being something that belongs to human society at large, and it doesn't belong exclusively to those authors who get to write about it because they have the money to write about it, that is the kind of shift that will allow
00:33:32
Speaker
for a different broader perspective. And now, how is this achieved is a kind of a bigger discussion, but I think a lot of it
00:33:45
Speaker
A lot of these kinds of ideas have written by people such as Paul Feijerabend and his ideas about how you can dismantle the strict method and gauge society in creating new science. And in that sense, if we would apply these kinds of things to archaeology in creating new authorships about the past, if that makes sense.
00:34:14
Speaker
I mean, because that's the basic conundrum. Is it the tools or the information that people have an issue with? Why do we get easily sucked into culture wars about how the past is represented if all it needs is like, actually, no, the information is this. It does seem as if things like narrative and how the information is presented and talked about is equally important.
00:34:41
Speaker
I don't know, Colleen, how do you feel like an anarchist view of archaeology from that perspective can actually help with the kind of way the public interacts with the past? In a way, I think that it's actually both. I'm a very, I don't know, I have a very Catholic approach, I suppose, to public interaction, public outreach. I think that my colleague, Gabe Moshenska, as
00:35:10
Speaker
really identified the need to be active on many, many, many different fronts. And I think there are a lot of people that are doing a lot better work than I have done in the past on this. And I think that
00:35:25
Speaker
One of the ways I'm the most interested in, though, is a situationist approach to public archaeology, which takes after the avant-garde artists and intellectuals from the 1957 to, well, 1972. And so this is very much rooted in Dadaism and surrealism, and so really haunting people
00:35:50
Speaker
with the past and really showing them that the past is all around us and suffuses everything we are and everything we do. I think there is a really interesting moment of friction that you can get, a chill you can get down your spine when you realize that somebody else has been here, has walked in this particular place.
00:36:09
Speaker
has experienced perhaps something similar to you. And it's the kind of those little moments in time that I really strive for within my own research. And I try to do this through digital interventions primarily, but I think you can do it in many other ways just with having people say use dress up boxes or having them come into direct contact with the materials of the past. And we'll hear more about that in our final segment of the show.
Pandemic's Impact on Academia and Archaeology
00:36:37
Speaker
Thank you.
00:36:41
Speaker
And we're back. This is Modern Myth. I'm speaking to Aris and Colleen of the Black Trial Collective, White Anarchism, Archaeology, Mutual Aid, and much, much more. So to take away from what we've been discussing, what could somebody do today to help other people? And what are the kind of steps that, you know, somebody could take?
00:37:10
Speaker
You mean in general or in archaeology specifically?
00:37:17
Speaker
Oh, and I think I'll make this in general, like, you know, you know, can they can they join a mutual aid group? Can they like provide support to students provide support to other practitioners? What are the things that they could do in the spirit of what the Black Trial Collective does? The first thing that anyone can do is start to as an individual actively thinking more about the
00:37:44
Speaker
the principle so to speak of anarchism because again going back to what Kulin said quite a bit earlier about this grabber approach to just you would be surprised to think that you might be an anarchist so primarily to start
00:38:04
Speaker
acting within your own workspace, within your own academic space, within your own community, in the spirit of solidarity or in the spirit of mutual aid, in the spirit of equality, making sure that you do not suppress voices, making sure that you give space to the people at the margins and making sure that you're not
00:38:34
Speaker
overtaking in the writing of history. And on a practical sense, you can always indeed organize yourself within your own community, within your own neighborhood, within your own academic institution, join a mutual aid group. And if you don't feel confident in doing that within archaeology because of a
00:38:57
Speaker
of professional status and that is something totally understandable. A lot of people have been scrutinized within academia for being anarchists. Then you can do the same thing within your own communities and even within your own street and make sure that if somebody is in need of food, you help provide not from a sense of charity, but from a true sense of neutral aid.
00:39:27
Speaker
Yeah, as Eros said, I think that there's really good entry points for you at any stage and level of commitment that you would like to engage with. And one of the best things you can do is just to find your local Food Not Bombs and ask if you can help out distribute food to the homeless. And then through some of those networks, you can get hooked into other issues and other anarchist collectives. There are collectives that protect people against fascist violence. There are collectives against
00:39:56
Speaker
people being evicted and quite a few other things in addition to providing frontline assistance during protests and things to keep other people safe. So yeah, I think you just can cast around your local network as much as you can because that often is where you can be the most effective.
00:40:20
Speaker
And obviously with the current situation in terms around the world of lockdowns and changes to how people work and things like that, it's more important than ever that there are avenues for people to assist one another. What do you think over the next couple of years
00:40:41
Speaker
Do you foresee any big changes in how archaeology is done? And do you think academia is going to change because of the pandemic? And does that spur a need for more effort in terms of this mutual aid? I think we're seeing a lot of pandemic after effects already.
00:41:04
Speaker
In just this week in the UK, the government is trying to suppress protests for Black Lives Matter and for extinction rebellion. And there are going to be a lot of fights to fight, to be honest. There's always the increased neoliberalization, and many of these things will be done under the justification of COVID relief and pandemic relief, when really we should be fighting as much as we possibly can
00:41:33
Speaker
to forward our principles and to have a more just and egalitarian society. And I think another very important thing will be an increased gatekeeping of knowledge, but in a negative way, from academic institutions with the increased privatization of education, less people will have access.
00:42:02
Speaker
We'll have access to education, we'll have access to knowledge, and as a result, we'll also have access to knowledge about the past and history. And that is something that we should really push back to. And I think there are so many ways to do this. Maybe the internet is often a really bad place, but it's also a really good place to make sure that we share
00:42:28
Speaker
the knowledge that we produce openly and accessibly, that we make sure that it reaches the wider public and make sure that even students who don't necessarily have the means to study in more expensive institutions, they are able to at least receive this knowledge via other channels. And I think groups like the Black Trial Collective and
00:42:54
Speaker
any other type of collective that wants to characterize itself as an anarchist collective should be providing means of access to green knowledge for students and for the wider public.
00:43:11
Speaker
Of course. And in the spirit of actually sharing things online, if you wouldn't mind letting us all know where we can find more information on the Black Trial Collective.
Where to Find More Information
00:43:25
Speaker
You can find more information about the Black Trial Collective on our website. And so that's just Black Trial Collective. I think it's at wordpress.com.
00:43:35
Speaker
and on Twitter. And we also have a Facebook group. We are also on Patreon. That is one of our sources of donations. And we really appreciate anybody who can give as much as within their means. Excellent, excellent. And for yourselves, is there any place that people can find more information about the work that you both do online?
00:44:01
Speaker
For myself, people can find me on Twitter at apolitopolis or you can also find my work on video games and I do a lot of stuff, but video games, archaeology and knowledge and accessible knowledge on Twitter as well at valuefnd.
00:44:24
Speaker
You can find me on Twitter as well, CL Morgan, CL Morgan, or my website, Colleen-Morgan.com. Perfect. Well, thank you very, very much for coming to speak to me of this show. I'll have links and all that information in show notes. So thank you again. And I wish you all the best with the Black Trial Collective going forward. Thank you. Thank you.
00:44:53
Speaker
No, it's clear, this conception's too healthy They told you what you wanna hear Why can't you see that the truth will set you free? Expose this modern bill for me A bill!
00:45:26
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.